Thinking Caps
Closing (Theater and Galleries)
The Short List (Theater)

When: Fridays-Sundays. Continues through May 31 2015

In this original sci-fi thriller for Strangeloop Theatre, playwright Keith Gatchel imagines the Thinking Cap, a social-media platform embedded in a Google Glass-like headset equipped with a camera that points into the wearers' conscious memories, allowing them to telepathically play virtual simulations and chat with friends. That's how faintly kooky Charles ends up having his first date with his naive and puckish future wife, Maggie. All the personal details and dialogue are smart and sweet, and the play touches minds with Vonnegut more than once. But after Maggie is hired by the smooth-talking Thinking Caps CEO and Charles aligns himself with an anti-thinking-cap congresswoman, a sinister super PAC commandeers the plot with attacks executed so incoherently and laboriously that even the intriguing notion of "weaponizing thought" gets lost in the muddle. —Jena Cutie